Stop the government from wasting $1.7 TRILLION on new nuclear weapons

• Nuclear weapons are horribly expensive. The U.S. government is planning to spend $1.7 TRILLION over the next 30 years to replace all of our nuclear bombs, missiles, submarines, etc., with brand new ones, including some designed to be more “usable.” To pay for them, Congress will want to cut many billions of dollars from useful pro-grams that help people.

• On October 31, 2017, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Obama Administration’s 2017 plans for nuclear forces would cost $1.2 trillion (in 2017 dollars) over the 2017–2046 period. Other expert sources have estimated even higher amounts. Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress have been pushing to escalate nuclear weapons even further, but even the Obama proposal was recklessly expensive – and unnecessary.

• Instead of spending ourselves into bankruptcy in order to build suicidal nuclear weapons, wouldn’t it make more sense to change to a peaceful foreign policy and nuclear disarmament? For a fraction of that cost we could solve many of the problems that result in war (poverty, hunger, environmental and climate-related problems that provoke migration, and so forth).

• An excellent source of information is the Arms Control Association (www.armscontrol.org). Their 8-18-2017, Issue Brief “The Trillion (and a Half) Dollar Triad?” provides useful information. It debunks some Trump lies, and it says – although Obama had begun a massive building of all new nuclear weapons – the Obama administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that the U.S. could “reduce the size of its deployed strategic nuclear arsenal by up to one-third below the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) levels.”

• Nuclear weapons cost much more than appears in the Dept. of “Defense” budget. The bombers, submarines, etc., are in the DoD budget, but the weapons themselves are in the Dept. of Energy budget. Building those creates huge amounts of nuclear waste. The current DoE budget shows some money for nuclear waste cleanup, but future costs are totally ignored, and American taxpayers will be paying to protect us from it for many thousands of years.

• Weapons systems are marketed to Congress with low projected costs, but after Congress approves them, their costs rise significantly and continuously. Congress is unwilling to cancel recklessly unnecessary, overpriced weapons, but keeps throwing more of our money at them.

Connect with the Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

We meet monthly to organize a good variety of strategically smart, useful activities.
We reach out to educate and mobilize the public, and we urge the government to abolish nuclear weapons.
Contact us at nuclearweapons@olympiafor.org (360) 705-2407 or (360) 491-9093.
See http://parallaxperspectives.org/category/nuclear-weapons
Our statewide coalition is Washington Against Nuclear Weapons, www.WANWcoalition.org (206) 547-2630.

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org